Friday, 17 January 2014

My book is called 'daydreams' and I am not sure that I mentioned that in the last posting. I have purposefully introduced many dreamlike elements which I think can represent the kind of dreams we have …. the embossings have been made to appear threadlike, twisted and entwined or more surreal and symbolic, sometimes very ordered and logical. I really like both the definitions below and hope a wander through my book would evoke just this kind of reverie.

Wikipedia defines daydreaming as ' a shot-termed detachment from one's immediate surroundings, during which a person's contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy'.

The Oxford defines daydreams as 'a series of pleasant thoughts that distract one's attention from the present'.

One of the great joys of this collaboration with Fiona is that it pushes us in different directions and we grow from that and learn. Oft times we pick up new techniques along the way which become part of our artistic arsenal or fabric, and other times we work with ideas for a while, find they don't sit well with us and so let them go. The elements I use in this book are ones that I have used for many years, but bringing in the pencil details is a new thing for me and one I will explore a little further. It gives me the opportunity to return from my origins in drawing, yet keeping the line work in the background still allows the mind to wander more freely around the page imagining dreams and stories for ourselves without them being prescribed.

Wednesday, 15 January 2014

Great excitement today as Fiona's and my books were to meet and neither of us had any idea about what the other was doing with their book. We had sketched out rough ideas when we met back in November but other than stipulating we would keep to roughly a similar size in book, and given that we both started with the same content as part of our collaboration, we had given each other no hints as to what we were doing. As we were working through the Christmas and New Year Period we were not able to get together and work on the books. As such it meant we had literally no idea what direction the other would take this particular piece.

Below was the first glimpse we had of the two books together and we were overcome with emotion at this birth of twins. Both a little tearful we opened pages together and revealed the work we had done and it felt like one heart beating in harmony with the other. So alike, and yet as always we both bring to the work those elements which are strongest within us and compliment the other's work so well.

With complete respect for Fiona's images, and mine (though one never minds cutting up one's own work!) I was able to de construct our prints from the Maleny Printmakers Exhibition and reassemble them into a story of 'daydreams'. Fiona in her unmistakable way, has brought about intimate 'conversations' between our paired prints and made the pages sing poetically.

We have only revealed a couple of the pages of the books as we are posting on these separately, but as is our habit, we could not resist photographing them from all sorts of angles and in various light.

This is our sixth collaborative work and one that rests most cohesively. I think that fact that we chose a similar format for the books and had the same materials meant that although we were completely delighted and surprised to see how well they worked together, we simultaneously just nodded and smiled knowing that of course it would be so ….